The Universe in Her Mind
by whitchry9
Summary: She's seventeen and everything is too much. Sequel to The World at Her Fingertips. Four parts.
1. Chapter 1

She's seventeen and her mother is gone.  
She likes the word gone better than any others, because with it, she can pretend that maybe it's just for a day, for a week, for a month. Gone leaves the possibility of coming back.  
_But she won't now, will she?_

She's seventeen and her father is trying, but she's not a child any more, wasn't sure if she ever really was, not a normal one anyway.  
Her father is trying, but not quite succeeding, and she finds it strange, because she was never really more attached to one parent over another, even after everything that happened.  
_Mummy was the one who shot Sherlock, killed Sherlock._

She's seventeen and wearing dark eye liner and she started smoking and hated it so she quit, but the nicotine wormed its way into her brain and now she's got a patch on her arm that reminds her of him every time she sees it, or feels it, tugging at the skin. She's pretty sure he knows, but she doesn't want to talk about it, because then that would involve discussions about being disappointing, and neither of them really want to do it, but he's apparently an adult, so he would be obligated to lecture if the topic came up.  
So they both make sure it doesn't.

She's seventeen and school is boring and life is boring and school is painful and life is painful.  
She's not sure how they can be both, but they are, and it's awful.  
So she ignores both of them, and instead does everything she's not supposed to.  
She dates boys her father doesn't approve of, she dates girls her father doesn't approve of, she dates no one, which her father is concerned about.  
She can't win with him.  
(One would think that he'd be understanding, seeing as how he married a spy who shot his best friend, but he may have forgotten that. Uncle Greg always ran background checks and if the slightest thing showed up, which it did, it always did, because she made sure, then her father would rant at her for twenty minutes about choices. She wisely chose not to comment on his, because that would remind him of her mother, and she'd not sure she can handle that on top of everything else.)

She throws herself into that lifestyle, of rebelling. Hell, she's a teenager, that's what they're supposed to do. Normal teenagers anyway. She supposes that's what she wants to be.  
Or appear, anyway.

She can't fool Sherlock of course, and so when she ends up at his flat, of no one's accord, it just sort of happened, never mind the walking and the tube and more walking she had to do to get there, her feet just sort of _went._

He's there, lying on his couch, clad in his dressing gown (thank god he's at least wearing something), fingers beneath his chin.  
She throws herself into a chair and waits for him to return.

"What is it Anna?" he says, not too long after. He wasn't buried very deeply this time.

She's no longer eleven, she no longer switches names every day. (No, it's more of every month, although she seems to come back to Anna more and more, such a normal name. Normal names can give the appearance of normality, even when she's... well, obviously not.)  
She sighs and looks at him, sprawled on the couch. She's sitting in her father's chair, because she understands what it means to him when she does that, and because she can't sit in Sherlock's chair, simply because it's _his._

He looks too old, far too old for the things he says and does. Still chasing after criminals, still clueless when it comes to social convention. (Sometimes she wonders if he's only pretending, for the sake of times gone by. Times spent with her father.)  
But at the same time he's incredibly young. So vibrant and full of life that it exhausts her to look at him, because if she's this tired at seventeen, then how is she supposed to make it to that age? How did _he_ make it to that age?  
She bets he thinks the same thing, shocked every day when he looks in the mirror, a face looking back at him aged beyond anything he'd ever hoped for.  
Or maybe he didn't. Maybe he never thought he'd live this long. Never wanted to see old age, when his body would fail him and his mind would lose its razor sharp edge.  
Who knows.  
Certainly not her.

But they don't talk about those things, because some things are better left unspoken, the conversations already completed in their heads, the outcomes not ideal.


	2. Chapter 2

"It's too much," she says finally, the words no match for the noise in her head. She's not sure he'll understand, but if anyone could, it's him.  
"What is?"  
She struggles with the words, mulling over something complicated, before finally settling on something simple, but so very accurate in all the most painful ways.  
"The world."  
"Oh god," Sherlock says quietly.  
"What?"  
"You're just like me." He sounds sad when he says it, like he would have wished for anything else in the world for her.  
"What's wrong with that?"  
He looks at her, and she stares back at him. "It may seem like a blessing to some, to be gifted with such... genius. Perception, memory, senses. But it's not. The world is too much when you take it all in. It just needs to... slow down."  
He clasped his hands under his chin and sank back into the couch, his eyes closed.  
"You think I'm like you," she said skeptically.  
Sherlock sighed. "I hope not. I wouldn't wish it on anyone."  
He cracked an eye open.  
"When you were younger, you told me you wanted to be like me when you grew up." He smiled with a certain fondness. "I told you that growing up was overrated. But you did, didn't you?" he sighed. "You grew up, and you're just like me, and it hurts, doesn't it? The world hurts."  
She focused on a point across the room, unable to look at him any longer.  
"Yes," she whispered. "Yes it does."

The world was too much, so much, and she wanted to breathe it all in, fill her hands and mind with it, but it kept slipping through her grasp, leaving her without air, and only reminding her of how much she was still missing. That no matter how much she saw or tasted or touched or knew, it would still never be enough.  
So why bother?  
She supposed that was the thing. If she couldn't do it all, then she didn't want to do it. If she couldn't be the best, she couldn't be bothered.  
Oh god she was just like him.

"How do you cope?" she asked him.  
He glanced at her. "My methods weren't the best," he commented wryly. "I became rather fond of drugs. They had a remarkable ability to calm the noise."  
She cocked her head at him. "True. I've never thought of that."  
"Don't," he said sharply. "Your father would kill me. And you. Both of us. Perhaps multiple times. That's the problem with him being a doctor, he'd know how to do it." He smiled to himself. "He knows how to sprain people."  
"What?"  
He shook his head. "Just something from a long time ago. I suppose you've never seen that part of your father."  
She shook her head.  
"He was careful. He didn't want that life for his daughter. He was addicted to danger and dangerous people, and would have done anything to keep you from that." He smiled and shook his head. "And look how that turned out..."  
He sounded wistful.  
"I can be whoever I want," she retorted.  
"Oh Anna," he sighed. "I was there when you were born. You and your mother both nearly died. You were a risk taker right from the start."  
She was startled. "No one told me that."  
Sherlock frowned. "Oh. Well, I suppose it's not really a secret, but it was hard for them to talk about. I've never seen your father more destroyed."  
_Except perhaps once, _he continued, but the words were unspoken.  
"Your father both loved and hated the dangerous lifestyle. He thought he'd gotten away from that after I was gone and he married your mother."  
She smirked. "But you came back, and he found out the truth about her."  
He shrugged. "For the best, I suppose. He only made it a month living a suburban lifestyle before he beat up a junkie."  
She snorted. "He did _what?_"  
"That's the spraining thing I mentioned earlier."  
He sighed.  
"He was so angry when he found out what your mother was. So very angry. At me, at her, at the world. Probably even at himself. I pointed out that he chose her. He saw something hidden away, and he still chose her, married her. He was so angry about that. I'm not sure where the anger was directed, but I was the one speaking, so it sort of... came out at me. And a table." He sighed again. "It really wasn't the most opportune time to discuss his attraction to dangerous situations and people, considering what he'd just found out, and the fact that I'd skipped out of hospital."  
She narrowed her eyes at him. "What was that now?"  
"Not important."  
He straightened up.  
"What I'm trying to say Anna, is that danger is written into your DNA. You can't escape it. I'd hope you could have escaped my..." he waved his hand in the air, "Curse... thing, but apparently not. But to have the two of them together..." he shook his head. "It can either be incredibly magnificent or incredibly dangerous."


	3. Chapter 3

They were both silent for a while.  
"You seem to have done pretty well," she commented.  
He smiled, but it didn't reach his eyes. "Oh and you wouldn't believe the things I had to do to get here. You wouldn't want to believe them. Which is why I'm not going to tell you."

"You know how much I appreciate it, right? That you never lie to me."  
He nodded. "Indeed. I promised myself before you were born that I would never, _ever, _lie to you. And that worried your parents, because they thought I would be indiscreet. But not lying and telling you everything were two very different things. I told you I had secrets. And I still do. Everyone has to have secrets. I don't think anyone can be entirely honestly about everything, it's just too much. You have to live with your own secrets, and I don't think you can bear someone else's on top."  
She tilted her head at him and considered that.  
"How do you do it? Bear your own secrets?"  
Another sad smile. "I'm not sure I'm the best person to ask. I sort of don't. I delete things and lock things away and pretend nothing's wrong, but they're still there."  
He sighed and leaned back again.  
"I have done a lot of things that I regret in my life, and a lot of things I should regret, but don't." He sighed. "I don't know if that makes me a bad person, or whatever, but the right thing to do isn't always the legal thing. But I never let that stop me."  
"You killed someone," she whispered.  
He nodded.  
"I've killed many, not directly, not purposely, not even at my own hand. But this was the first person who I intended to kill. And my god, I never regret it for a second. I still don't."  
"Who?" she whispered.  
She could see him thinking for a moment, calculating if he should indeed tell her.  
"Charles Augustus Magnussen."  
"What about him?"  
He didn't even bother to smile this time. "I shot him, point blank, in the head."  
She should have been shocked, but wasn't. "Why?"  
"He was going to ruin your parent's life, and therefore yours, even though you weren't born yet. I couldn't let that happen. I made a promise at the wedding, one of only two promises I've made and intended to keep." A corner of his mouth upturned. "It shouldn't be surprising that both promises involved you. That was the night they found out about you. Another deduction I didn't see coming." He sighed. "It was that sort of day."

"Fast forward a couple months to the shooting, which you know about, and the aftermath of it. Your father forgave your mother, but none of that would have mattered if the truth had come out. It would be a lifetime of hiding and looking over shoulders. Magnussen had to be stopped. Which I did. They could live their lives. Then there was you."  
He smiled fondly.  
"And it was wonderful. It was wonderful to watch them with you, and to watch you grow. It was the most important experiment I'd ever done." He smiled again at that, knowing that she would understand what he meant. "For so many years, it was perfect. But then you got too clever, asking questions, questions that couldn't go unanswered. So you found out." He took a deep breath. "You found out and you forgave and everyone moved on. But then your mother..." he trailed off, knowing that neither of them could bear to say it.  
_She died.  
_"There was still so much I didn't know about your mother, that even your father didn't know about her. But it was safer that way, for everyone. Your father would have died to protect her, and she knew that. And she wouldn't have wanted that to happen. So she had secrets. And those secrets died with her."  
She winced at the word.

They sat in comfortable silence for a while, the only two people at 221 Baker Street.  
The flat below them is empty now. Mrs Hudson is gone as well. (Gone, dead, it didn't really matter. _No, yes it does matter, because she was your grandmother and she's gone and it's sad, and it broke you for weeks and still if you think about it- _She doesn't think about it.)  
Sherlock doesn't shoot the walls anymore, mostly because he doesn't have access to a gun, because the one he used before was her father's, and now it was hidden away somewhere in their house. She'd never seen it, but she wanted to, like the touch of it would reveal secrets to her.  
Maybe it would.  
Maybe it would whisper explanations of friendships and shootings, show her the murder of the man who would have ruined their lives, explain how everything came to be the way it was, precariously balanced on the thin edge of one in infinite possibilities.  
Or maybe it was just an object, just atoms in a particular arrangement that meant nothing.  
Either way, she really wanted to know.

He sighed again. "But like I said, I think it's impossible to share everything. It weighs too heavily on one's mind. I do worry about doing that to you."  
She nodded.  
"I think I'm doing okay, though," she said carefully.  
She didn't want to worry him.  
Really, she was fine.

She left Sherlock shortly after, having retreated into his mind palace, or claiming to anyway.  
She wondered what his was like. Hers had developed from the outdoor area of her youth to something more mystical. It was winding hallways and staircases and doors behind bookshelves, but it was hers, and she knew her way around it comfortably.


	4. Chapter 4

Her father asked her where she'd been.  
"Baker Street," she told him.  
"How's Sherlock doing?" he asked.  
"You know perfectly well how he's doing," she retorted. "You were over there yesterday for tea."  
He shrugged. "How could you tell?"  
"The cups were washed. You're the only one who does that."  
He smiled at her.  
She went upstairs.

She reappeared before dinner, something cooking that involved peas. (Sherlock told her about the peas thing. Once. But then he frowned and said maybe it wasn't him.)  
"Dad."  
She stood in front of her, a living reminder of everything that he'd suffered through with her mother.  
(God, how did he not hate her? She hated herself for it.)  
"Yes?"  
"I'd like to see the gun."  
She watched him carefully, not quite sure what his response may be. She'd prepared a number of different counterarguments in case he refused.  
He tilted his head at her in a very Sherlock manner. She wondered if he even knew that he did that, or where he got it from.  
"I suppose. You stay here while I get it, alright? And I'll be taking the bullets out, of course."  
"You keep it loaded?" she called after him as he left.  
He only shrugged.  
Old habits die hard.

She sat on the floor and waited for him to come back.  
(She could tell where it was from his footsteps on the ceiling and the time it took for him to come back. Of course, it probably wouldn't be kept there anymore. He wasn't stupid, and he knew of her skills.)

He didn't seem shocked to find her sitting on the floor, but then she'd always sat in the strangest places.  
("A cat," her mother had called her once. "Curled up in the most unlikely places, and yet the most annoying ones possible.")  
He handed it to her and sat back down in his chair wearily. He watched with a careful eye and she examined it, taking in every detail.

She closed her eyes and held it, feeling the weight in her hands, feeling the weight of the memories it held instead of bullets.

_A friendship forged in gunfire, a cabbie downed before a pill could be taken; the threat of killing if he didn't let go, shots into the dark after the fact, couldn't risk hurting him, just couldn't; pointed at a bomb that used to be on her father, a bluff that wasn't, not entirely; aimed at someone who dared to threaten Mrs Hudson; a manic dog that was just as deluded as they were; sitting in a drawer for two years, the thought always there; and the final piece, a sacrifice for the woman who shot him, and the man they both loved, a bullet through the vaults that threatened to tear their world apart._

She was surprised at how light it was, considering.

She opened her eyes, and nothing had changed. Not really. Her father was still sitting there, looking far too old and young at the same time. Her mother was still gone. Sherlock was still at Baker Street, experiments and crimes and mysteries surrounding him.

But she'd held the gun, and now she knew. Knowing was the most powerful thing.

But instead of crowding her brain, instead of increasing the noise that threatened on a daily basis to either deafen her or drive her insane, it calmed down.  
Her brain hushed.  
Knowledge was power, and she held that power, even over herself, and she could chose to hush it if she wished.  
She felt a sudden urge to wrap the universe in her arms and squeeze til all the knowledge came out in concentrated bits for her, like orange juice.  
But she didn't.  
Instead she handed the gun back to her father, kissed him on the cheek, and thanked him.

But the thanks were more than that. They were an apology, an acknowledgement of all the suffering she'd caused, not only with her rebellion, but from the instant that she was conceived.  
After all, how much of her father forgiving her mother was based on the fact she was pregnant? If that single egg hadn't been fertilized by that exact sperm, it could have ended very differently.  
But instead of opening her mind to the pain of those opportunities, it comforted her.

And instead of her mind ringing in her ears, threatening with each passing day to steal her sanity, the ringing calmed to a humming, and it soothed her.  
It would be alright.

Still, it's not plan B yet, which almost disappoints her, because damn, she'd look good in a crown.  
There was always next year.


End file.
